‘I’m the mayor’s brother,’ says man who stole car with 2 kids inside, Arkansas cops say

“Don’t worry, I’m the mayor’s brother,” he told the children’s parents over the phone, police say.

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US urges China to free professor who criticized Xi

The United States called Tuesday on China to free an outspoken professor who was detained after criticizing President Xi Jinping over the coronavirus pandemic. Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Tsinghua University, one of China's top institutions, was taken from his home in suburban Beijing on Monday along with more than 20 other people, his friends said. "We are deeply concerned by the PRC's detention of Professor Xu Zhangrun for criticizing Chinese leaders amid tightening ideological controls on university campuses in China," State Department spokesman Morgan Ortagus said, referring to the People's Republic of China.

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California officer under investigation for allegedly sharing 'vulgar image' of George Floyd; NAACP San Diego calls for his firing

A San Diego officer is under investigation for allegedly sharing an "altered photograph" of a "naked black male porn star" kneeling on George Floyd.

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Should schools reopen? Pediatricians, politicians say yes — but teachers disagree

President Donald Trump said “everybody wants it.” Teachers unions are calling it “brazen” decision-making.

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Atlanta Mayor: No need for troops, despite governor's order

The mayor of Atlanta said Tuesday that she doesn’t agree with the Georgia governor’s order to mobilize the National Guard in her city as a surge in violence became a political talking point. Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency on Monday and authorized activation of up to 1,000 Guard troops after a weekend of gun violence in Atlanta left five people dead, including Secoriea Turner, an 8-year-old girl. Atlanta Police Lt. Pete Malecki said the video comes from a surveillance camera near where Secoriea was shot while riding in the back seat of an SUV.

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Rare Tsunami Formed In Chesapeake Bay During Monday's Storms, Forecasters Say

A rare meteotsunami formed in the Chesapeake Bay as thunderstorms rolled through Maryland Monday night. According the The National Weather Service's Mt. Holly bureau the tsunami formed near Tolchester Beach in Kent County. Katie Johnston reports.

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Did Doxxing of an Oklahoma Councilwoman Lead to a Neighbor Being Raped?

A city council member in Norman, Oklahoma, proposed a police budget cut. Then officers for that department posted her address online. Days later, a woman who lived in the other half of her duplex was raped by an assailant who allegedly made a political threat.The attack was a case of retaliation and mistaken identity, the council member alleges.Alexandra Scott, a Norman council member who won the Democratic nomination for her state Senate seat last month, is an outspoken critic of her city’s police force. When racial justice protests swept the nation in June, Scott proposed slashing the Norman Police budget by $4.5 million. During a city council meeting about defunding, she also discussed a stalking incident she experienced, which she said police handled improperly. Now a pair of Norman Police officers are under investigation for allegedly posting Scott’s personal information online, which Scott says may have led to the sexual assault of her neighbor.These 911 Emergency Dispatchers Are Ready to Defund the PoliceDefunding the police is a fraught issue across the country, but especially in Norman, where police have made their disagreements with elected officials well known. Amid calls to slash the city’s police budget by millions, council members voted to reallocate $865,000 from the department. The move didn’t cut the police’s overall budget (it mostly vetoes the department’s requested raise, but keeps the department’s coffers at slightly above last year’s budget) but it was enough for the city’s police union to file a lawsuit against city council this month. Scott’s criticism of Norman Police has made her a favorite villain in some pro-police circles in the city. A recent Facebook post shared by a Norman Police officer called her “another AOC,” in reference to the New York representative who has become a boogeyperson for conservatives. That same police officer, John Barbour, is one of two under investigation for sharing Scott’s personal details shortly after her testimony on police defunding. In posts first reported by the Norman Transcript, Barbour made a Facebook post sharing an unredacted video of police responding to Scott’s 911 call in May. (Although details of the video remain unconfirmed, they align with Scott’s own testimony about calling 911 on a stalker that month.)Neither Scott nor Norman Police returned The Daily Beast’s requests for comment. Barbour declined to comment, referring The Daily Beast to the Norman Police public information officer, as his case was under investigation. A spokesperson for the group Norman Citizens for Racial Justice said Scott’s address was identifiable in the post. “After Alex shared her story of solidarity during that [city council] study session, an officer released an unredacted report and some footage of her making a police report fairly recently,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “Those items that the officer uploaded to Facebook had her home address on there.”This Utah Police Chief Was Promoted Even After His Racist Posts Were Exposed. Now Residents Want Him Out.When Barbour was met with criticism online for the video, he responded sarcastically. “So what I am getting is that if the issue was the officer let everyone see, but when someone slanders the fine officers on open record meeting it’s not ok to find out the proof,” he posted, apparently accusing Scott of being dishonest in her testimony.Barbour removed the video but shared a recent police report (from when Scott was arrested at a recent protest) that contained her address. In comments viewed by The Daily Beast, Barbour accused Scott of participating in a riot. When commenters noted that “you can’t just call protesters rioters … There was no riot,” Barbour responded, “If you say so….but I bet state law says different.”Another Norman Police officer, Michael Lauderback, appears to have also shared Scott’s personal information using the Facebook handle “Tired Ofthehate,” which was linked to his legal name. Lauderback posted a picture of a sexual assault report Scott made in 2015. Lauderback could not be reached for comment and appears to have since deleted his Facebook account.Both officers are now under investigation for posting Scott’s personal information, the Norman Record reported. The police department noted that since Barbour claimed to have obtained the video from a third party who obtained it through a public records request, the officers’ posts appear to be legal.But Scott and Norman Citizens for Racial Justice said the posts play into a larger culture of harassment that has emerged on Norman-centric social media. “Most of the targeting happened after we started advocating for defunding the police,” the Racial Justice spokesperson told The Daily Beast, noting that many people in her group were experiencing harassment from a “ReOpen Norman” Facebook page.In a since-deleted Facebook post, Scott said that social media activity had led to real-world horror for her and a neighbor.“People were passing around my address on social media (and wherever else) for 2 weeks & making light of my experiences with assault and stalking,” she wrote. “I’ve received threatening messages and voicemails from men stating they, ‘hoped I didn’t need the police’ when something happened.”Scott claims those threats came to a head late last month. Her address, which was shared publicly, is in a duplex building. On June 27, someone broke into the other half of the duplex and assaulted Scott’s neighbor.“She was raped by [a] stranger who broke into her side of our duplex last night. She had been out with her father, he dropped her off around Midnight and left. Then she was assaulted in her hallway,” Scott wrote in the now-deleted post. “Her rapist dug his elbow into her neck, pushed her into the wall, and told her ‘Maybe next time you’ll learn your lesson.’ He threw her on the ground and raped her.”The attack, she said, was intended for her. “They got the wrong woman,” she wrote. Norman Police released a statement acknowledging the incident and the prior publication of the address on social media although, in a heavily redacted police report obtained by the Transcript, the incident is described as a burglary.Since Norman Police officers posted Scott’s address, it has circulated on right-wing Oklahoma pages, where it remains online. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Serbia Protests Meet Violent Response in Europe’s 1st Major Virus Unrest

By BY PATRICK KINGSLEY from NYT World https://ift.tt/2O5zRPF

Newsom Says California Has the Capacity to Treat 50,000 Virus Patients

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State Attorney General Calls for Stripping N.Y.P.D. Control From Mayor

By BY ALI WATKINS from NYT New York https://ift.tt/38D6hdU

The Next Big Campaign Issue: Reopening Schools

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Trump Hosts Mexican President to Celebrate Trade Deal

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Letters to the Editor: Wear a mask so you can be healthy enough to vote Trump out of office on Nov. 3

Trump is angry and terrified. He will do anything to win re-election, so we must watch him closely until Nov. 3.

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New York attorney general recommends reducing mayor's power over police

New York Attorney General Letitia James recommended that New York City's mayor give up sole control over the city police commissioner's hiring, in a preliminary report released on Wednesday on her investigation into the policing of recent protests. "There should be an entirely new accountability structure for NYPD," James said in her report, which also recommended giving more power to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a city agency that reviews police misconduct.

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Navy SEAL who oversaw bin Laden raid says America's biggest national security issue is the K-12 education system

The US needs an education system that informs students about the world around them, retired Navy Adm. William McRaven said.

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Three Mars missions poised to launch to the Red Planet in July

The busy schedule begins July 14 with the United Arab Emirates' first-ever interplanetary effort.

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TikTok: Chinese app may be banned in US, says Pompeo

US Secretary of State hints that Chinese apps - like TikTok - could be targeted.

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Iran-backed militia says PM's actions could bring escalation

A powerful Iran-backed militia said Wednesday there would be “escalation” if Iraq's prime minister continues to clamp down on armed groups, as tensions spiked following the killing of a prominent analyst, pitting the state against rogue elements. Hostilities have flared as Iraq reels from the assassination of Hisham al-Hashimi, 47, who was gunned down by unknown assailants on motorbikes outside his Baghdad home Monday. Al-Hashimi's killers are still unknown but many point to the timing of the assassination, coming just two weeks after a raid on the headquarters of the Kataib Hezbollah militia south of Baghdad.

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Italy to monitor sewage in hunt for possible new COVID-19 wave

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GOP Senators Preparing $1.3 Trillion Coronavirus Aid Package to Counter House Dems’ Proposal

Republican senators are piecing together an additional coronavirus aid package to counter House Democrats' phase-4 aid proposal.The GOP bill in its current form will provide an additional $1.3 trillion in economic aid to U.S. taxpayers and businesses, CNN reported on Wednesday evening. House Democrats have already proposed their own $3 trillion aid package, however Senate Republicans have pushed back on the high price tag."It won’t be $3 trillion. That bill is not going anywhere," Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on Wednesday. The GOP proposal will likely include aid to schools, hospitals, and businesses, along with liability protections for companies.The Republican caucus has urged caution when passing additional aid packages, preferring to study the effects of previous legislation to make sure the aid is effective in keeping the U.S. economy afloat. McConnell said that talks with Democrats on a new round of aid would be more difficult "because of the proximity to the election.""It is unclear to me right now how we will resolve several contentious issues," Senator Chris Coons (D., Conn.) told CNN, echoing McConnell. "It's going to be a rough road. There are a lot of competing interests. A lot."House Democrats may also piece together an infrastructure spending bill to offset some of the economic effects of the pandemic. The idea for an infrastructure bill has received support from Republicans including President Trump, as well as Senators Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), Roy Blunt (R., Mo.), and Roger Wicker (R., Miss.).

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Woman filmed coughing on baby’s face loses job

A woman who appeared to cough on another woman’s child because she did not social distance inside a store, was said to have lost her position with a California school district.Oak Grove School District said the unnamed woman did not work with the school district in San Jose, California, anymore.

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COVID-19 Cuts a Lethal Path Through San Quentin’s Death Row

By Dan Morain, KHNThe old men live in cramped spaces and breathe the same ventilated air. Many are frail, laboring with heart disease, liver and prostate cancer, tuberculosis, dementia. And now, with the coronavirus advancing through their ranks, they are falling one after the next.This is not a nursing home, not in any traditional sense. It is California’s death row at San Quentin State Prison, north of San Francisco. Its 670 residents are serial killers, child murderers, men who killed for money and drugs, or shot their victims as part of their wasted gangster lives. Some have been there for decades, growing old behind bars. One is 90, and more than 100 are 65 or older.Executions have been on hold in California since 2006, stalled by a series of legal challenges. And they won’t resume anytime soon: In 2019, two months after taking office, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on executions and ordered that San Quentin’s death chamber be dismantled. But death has come to San Quentin nonetheless.In recent days, five death row inmates have died after contracting COVID-19. Almost 200 others are thought to be ill with the virus, according to a Newsom administration official not authorized to speak publicly. Scores more are refusing to be tested. For now, there is no clear remedy and no end in sight.“San Quentin’s staff—especially medical staff—is simply drowning among the chaos,” State Public Defender Mary McComb said in a letter last week to the state Senate Public Safety Committee. “San Quentin desperately needs a significant number of additional personnel, and quickly.”Correctional officers are working double and even triple shifts. Doctors have been working 12-plus-hour days, seven days a week, for the past six weeks, McComb wrote: “Men (including some who have tested positive) report not having access to doctors, not receiving medication for symptoms such as coughs, and not receiving regular oxygen-level or blood pressure checks.”San Quentin’s coronavirus outbreak could prove to be the worst at any prison in the nation. It began in mid-June, shortly after the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transferred 121 inmates to San Quentin from the state prison in Chino, east of Los Angeles, in a failed effort to stem an outbreak there. At least 20 of the Chino transfers subsequently tested positive for the disease.Now, more than 1,400 San Quentin inmates have the virus, or more than a third of the prison’s 4,000 inmates. And death row has been hit particularly hard. Of the six inmate deaths that prison authorities have formally attributed to the coronavirus, three were on death row. Two more death row inmates who died in recent days also tested positive for the virus, though the official cause of death is pending. San Quentin, which opened in 1852, is renowned for its rehabilitative programs. Most San Quentin inmates are classified as minimum or medium security risks and will be released one day. They take college courses and participate in job-training programs. Some work on the prison’s award-winning podcast and newspaper.An additional 670 at San Quentin are condemned, and ineligible for release, no matter how old or infirm.About 500 of them are housed in East Block, a hangar-size structure that is five tiers high. They live one to a cell, 10.5 feet by 4.75 feet. The doors are steel mesh. They cannot help but breathe one another’s air. Sixty-four of the best-behaved inmates are housed on the traditional death row, known as North Seg. There’s a Mickey Mouse clock in the officers’ area emblazoned with the words “The Happiest Place on Earth.” North Seg, East Block and a third unit for condemned inmates, Donner, were built in 1934, 1930 and 1913, none with a pandemic in mind.COVID-19 has infiltrated 20 of California’s 34 prisons, though it has been especially bad at nine. As of Tuesday, more than 5,300 inmates statewide had tested positive for the virus and 29 had died.The plague raging inside San Quentin’s walls is spreading into the outside world. Dozens of San Quentin inmates are being treated in community hospitals, including at least 20 death row inmates as of last week. Each is guarded by two correctional officers round-the-clock.The exact number of death row inmates who have the virus is not known. Complicating matters, about 40 percent have refused to be tested, McComb and others said. By law, they cannot be compelled to undergo the test unless they are deemed mentally incompetent.McComb addressed the refusals in her letter, saying some of the condemned inmates worry they will be moved to a segregated unit typically reserved for discipline if they test positive, while others fear the procedure is unsafe.“And third, a general hopelessness has set in among the population; there is no reason to be tested when medical staff, despite their best efforts, are stretched too thin to respond to those in need of care,” McComb wrote.‘Too Little, Too Late’: Inside the Nation’s Worst Coronavirus HotspotOne who refused to be tested was Richard Stitely. He was found dead in his cell the night of June 24. The Marin County coroner found he was infected with the coronavirus, though the exact cause of death is still to be determined.Stitely, 71, was sentenced to death in 1992 for the murder of Carol Unger, a 47-year-old mother. The two had met in a San Fernando Valley bar, and he offered to drive her home. Her body was found in the valley in January 1990.Andrew R. Flier was a 28-year-old L.A. County deputy district attorney who prosecuted Stitely for the rape and murder of Unger, and for the previous rape of a 16-year-old girl. Now in private practice, Flier said evidence suggested Stitely could have choked Unger for five minutes, first with a cord and then with his hands. He sees Stitely’s apparent death from a disease that deprives victims of their breath as “poetic justice.”“A terrible disease is infecting our world, and it found someone terrible to infect,” Flier said. “I shed no tears. Evil is evil, and I thought he was evil.”Over the years, the California Supreme Court had upheld the death sentences of Stitely and the four other condemned inmates who died after contracting the virus. Two of the men had killed children, including a 75-year-old convicted of a 1979 murder. Three of the inmates were in their late fifties.No matter their crimes, some people say, inmates don’t deserve to die of COVID-19, especially after it likely was introduced by the ill-fated decision to transfer infected inmates from Chino to San Quentin.“It is the death penalty by other means. It is a miscarriage of justice,” said Assembly member Marc Levine, a Democrat whose district includes San Quentin.In a hearing last week, U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar in San Francisco, presiding over a long-running suit challenging California prison conditions, urged the state to release elderly and infirm inmates who pose no public safety threat—and are not on death row—to free up cells so infected prisoners could be isolated and the COVID-19 spread slowed.“These releases need to happen immediately. There simply is no time to wait,” Tigar said, directing his comments at Newsom.On Monday, Newsom said San Quentin’s population would be reduced to about 3,000 in coming weeks. “We’ve been working on this every single day for the last three weeks,” he said.Corrections spokesperson Terry Thornton said the department has installed six tents to treat San Quentin inmates and “is working closely with health care and public health experts on all isolation and quarantine protocols recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to address COVID-19 in correctional settings.”Meet San Quentin’s Tough Trans Prison GuardWhile the virus infects death row, California’s capital punishment law is in a state of limbo. With executions on hold, Levine last year introduced legislation to place a measure on the statewide ballot to abolish capital punishment. That measure has stalled.Last month, the California Supreme Court indicated it is weighing the legality of one aspect of the state’s death penalty statute: Must jurors agree on aggravating factors that led them to recommend death? As it is, jurors need not be unanimous.The justices posed the question based on a single case involving a 2004 killing, though a decision could set a precedent that would affect the sentences of scores of condemned inmates. Any decision is likely months away, presumably after the COVID-19 rampage has run its course on San Quentin’s death row.KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF(Kaiser Family Foundation)that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Breonna Taylor's family argues police had no cause for raid

Louisville police called off a warrant search of Breonna Taylor’s apartment after a drug suspect was located elsewhere, but then went ahead with the deadly raid to look for other suspects with no connection to Taylor, her family says in a new court filing. Taylor, a emergency medical technician who had settled down for the night at her Louisville apartment, was fatally shot when officers burst into her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13. The shooting set off weeks of protests, policy changes and a call for the officers who shot Taylor to be criminally charged.

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